NASA Signs Contract for Elon Musk's Starship, Even Though It's Never Launched Without Exploding

NASA has officially added SpaceX's enormous Starship rocket to its roster — despite the vehicle never having completed a single successful test flight, let alone a mission.

The space agency announced last week that it had awarded SpaceX a "modification under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to add Starship to their existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch service offerings."

As the agency explains, these contracts "provide a broad range of commercial launch services for NASA’s planetary, Earth-observing, exploration, and scientific satellites."

The news shouldn't come as a surprise at this point given SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's growing influence in the White House. His space company has made moves to take over key positions at the agency, highlighting Musk's glaring conflict of interest.

Even Jared Isaacman, who's expected to be sworn in as NASA's next administrator soon, has a long history with SpaceX.

But the company has struggled as of late to get the upper stage of its mega rocket to launch and safely land, ending in dramatic — and strikingly similar — explosions during its last two test launches earlier this year.

At the same time, the promise of a super heavy launch platform is tantalizing. Starship, as the largest rocket ever built, could give the United States a massive leg up, greatly facilitating its access to space and ability to launch enormous payloads into orbit and beyond.

And not just for NASA's science operations — the agency can also "provide launch services to other federal government agencies" under its NLS II contracts.

While it may sound like it on the surface, the space agency's latest announcement is far from a full-throated endorsement. As SpaceNews explains, NASA categorizes launch vehicles under NLS II into four groups, with Category 1 being the highest risk, including rockets that have yet to make their first flight.

"Medium risk," or Category 2, vehicles have anywhere between one and six consecutive successful launches under their belt.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin announced last month that its New Glenn rocket, which is roughly one and a half times as powerful as SpaceX's Falcon 9, was certified as Category 1.

In what category SpaceX's Starship falls remains to be seen. According to NASA, NLS II contracts have an "ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032."

In the meantime, SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to get authorization to communicate with its Starship during NASA's upcoming Artemis 3 and 4 missions to the lunar surface, tentatively scheduled for mid-2027 and late 2028, respectively.

NASA is still hoping to tap Starship to deliver astronauts from lunar orbit down to the Moon's surface under its Human Landing System (HLS) program.

But whether SpaceX's rocket will be ready in time for the historic missions remains to be seen. During its most recent test flight earlier this month, Starship's upper stage exploded into countless pieces of space junk over the Caribbean in what could be a huge setback for the firm.

Users on social media took NASA's latest announcement in strides, taking the opportunity to poke fun at Starship's particularly explosive development period.

"Great... I'm sure whenever NASA needs a payload spread across 1000 km of ocean they'll pick Starship," one Reddit user joked.

"It's not so much a delivery system, as it is a distribution system…" another user added.

More on Starship: Elon Musk Secretly Working to Take Over NASA

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